Name: Fish Crescents
Ingredients: Toasted crescents of bread; ½ cup smoked haddock (or cold salmon), finely chopped; 2 teaspoons anchovy sauce; ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 2 tablespoons butter (or Hugon’s suet); 1 egg, hardboiled; 1 tablespoon lobster coral; 1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Why it works: Haddock and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fish Crescents

Ingredients

Toasted crescents of bread
½ cup smoked haddock (or cold salmon), finely chopped
2 teaspoons anchovy sauce
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
2 tablespoons butter (or Hugon’s suet)
1 egg, hardboiled
1 tablespoon lobster coral
1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Directions

Make the fish mixture

Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat.
Add the chopped fish, anchovy sauce, cayenne pepper, and salt. Mix thoroughly.

Assemble

Butter the toasted crescents of bread.
Pile the fish mixture on each crescent.

Garnish and serve

Garnish some crescents with the hardboiled egg yolk.
Garnish some crescents with chopped parsley.
Garnish some crescents with lobster coral.
Serve on lace paper.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Haddock + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together200 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Anchovy + lobstertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together470 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Sauce + lobstertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,095 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Haddock + anchovytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together75 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Smoked haddock: Forms the main savoury fish filling that gives the crescents their flavour and texture.
Butter: Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the fish mixture richness and a smooth texture.
Anchovy sauce: Adds salty, savoury depth that seasons the fish filling.
Toasted bread crescents: Provides a crisp base that holds the fish mixture and adds contrasting texture.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.